All posts tagged United States

Think of the European Union as a great big family that’s moved recently into the nicest street in town with the other upmarket dynasties: the Japans, the Chinas and, grandest of all, the United States.

It’s got plenty of outward respectability, and, at the moment, the biggest business in the whole street. Not necessarily the best run, mind you, but the biggest.

The trouble is, the neighbors are a bit worried about some of the more wayward members of this clan. Greece is the one they really shake their heads at, but Spain, Portugal, Italy and the U.K. also get the curtains twitching on this rarefied avenue. If it weren’t for the unimpeachable rectitude of the patriarch, Germany, the gossips whisper at the tennis club, it’s doubtful some of these scamps could ever have afforded to live on the street at all. Are they really our sort of people? And even the patriarch’s finances are stretched, so the gossips claim.